WP-Sweep finds the rows WordPress leaves behind and removes them. Revisions of posts you edited years ago, meta belonging to a post that was deleted, terms attached to nothing, term relationships pointing at posts that no longer exist, expired transients: none of it is visible anywhere in wp-admin, and all of it is in your database.

It uses the proper WordPress delete functions wherever they can reach the row, rather than running raw delete queries, so the hooks other plugins rely on still fire. Only the rows the API refuses to touch — orphaned meta whose object ID is 0 — are deleted directly.

Features

Revisions
Auto drafts
Deleted posts
Unapproved comments
Spammed comments
Deleted comments
Orphaned post meta
Orphaned comment meta
Orphaned user meta
Orphaned term meta
Orphaned term relationships
Unused terms
Duplicated post meta
Duplicated comment meta
Duplicated user meta
Duplicated term meta
Transient options
oEmbed caches in post meta
Optimizes database tables

Delete functions used

wp_delete_post_revision()
wp_delete_post()
wp_delete_comment()
delete_post_meta()
delete_comment_meta()
delete_user_meta()
delete_term_meta()
wp_remove_object_terms()
wp_delete_term()
delete_transient()
delete_site_transient()

Known incompatibilities

These plugins keep data in places WP-Sweep reads as orphaned. Protect their meta keys with the filters under Usage before sweeping.

Donations

I spent most of my free time creating, updating, maintaining and supporting these plugins, if you really love my plugins and could spare me a couple of bucks, I will really appreciate it. If not feel free to use it without any obligations.

Usage

Every sweep is irreversible, so back your database up first.

The screen lists every sweep with a short description of what it removes, how many items that is, and what proportion of the table they are. Tick the ones you want and use the Sweep bulk action, or use each row’s Sweep and Details buttons one at a time. Nothing on the screen needs JavaScript: the buttons are ordinary links and the bulk action is an ordinary form.

There is no settings screen. The one thing worth tuning — how many items Details lists, 500 by default — is the wp_sweep_limit_details filter. The cap exists because the whole sample is held in memory and written into the page.

WP-CLI

wp sweep --all
wp sweep revisions
wp sweep revisions auto_drafts deleted_posts

REST API

All three routes need the activate_plugins capability.

GET    /wp-json/sweep/v1/count/<name>
GET    /wp-json/sweep/v1/details/<name>
DELETE /wp-json/sweep/v1/sweep/<name>

Item names

revisions, `auto_drafts`, `deleted_posts`, `unapproved_comments`, `spam_comments`, `deleted_comments`, `transient_options`, `orphan_postmeta`, `orphan_commentmeta`, `orphan_usermeta`, `orphan_termmeta`, `orphan_term_relationships`, `unused_terms`, `duplicated_postmeta`, `duplicated_commentmeta`, `duplicated_usermeta`, `duplicated_termmeta`, `optimize_database`, `oembed_postmeta`.

Filters

wp_sweep_postmeta_whitelist (array) — post meta keys that must never be deleted, by the orphaned or the duplicated post meta sweep. * matches any run of characters. Default: empty.
wp_sweep_commentmeta_whitelist (array) — the same, for comment meta.
wp_sweep_usermeta_whitelist (array) — the same, for user meta.
wp_sweep_termmeta_whitelist (array) — the same, for term meta.
wp_sweep_excluded_taxonomies (array) — taxonomies left out of the orphaned term relationships sweep. Default: array( 'link_category' ).
wp_sweep_excluded_termids (array) — term IDs left out of the unused terms sweep. Default: each taxonomy’s default term, plus any term that is the parent of another.
wp_sweep_limit_details (int) — how many items a Details list shows. Default: 500.
wp_sweep_capability (string $capability, string $context) — the capability required. $context is one of sweep, ajax or rest.
wp_sweep_total_count (int $count, string $name) — the total number of rows a sweep’s percentage is measured against.
wp_sweep_count (int $count, string $name) — how many items a sweep would remove.
wp_sweep_details (array $details, string $name) — the sample list shown by Details.
wp_sweep_sweep (string $message, string $name) — the message reported after a sweep has run.

Actions

wp_sweep_admin_post_sweep, `wp_sweep_admin_comment_sweep`, `wp_sweep_admin_user_sweep`, `wp_sweep_admin_term_sweep`, `wp_sweep_admin_option_sweep` and `wp_sweep_admin_database_sweep` all fire below the sweep table, in that order.

Protect specific post meta keys from being swept:

add_filter( 'wp_sweep_postmeta_whitelist', function ( $meta_keys ) {
    $meta_keys[] = '_my_plugin_setting';
    $meta_keys[] = '_acme_*';
    return $meta_keys;
} );

Exclude an additional taxonomy from the orphaned term relationships sweep:

add_filter( 'wp_sweep_excluded_taxonomies', function ( $taxonomies ) {
    $taxonomies[] = 'product_type';
    return $taxonomies;
} );